Reply to All - A Cautionary Tale

With apologies to the artist, I did replace 
his ‘accidentally’ with ‘purposely’

I started drafting this earlier this year when Congress prepared to approve Rick Perry (Dept. of Energy) to head the agency he once couldn’t remember but wanted to disband and Scott Pruitt (EPA) to lead the agency he sued half-a-dozen times. At the time, I was reminded of one of the high (and low) points of my career in the energy business.

The recent news about how Google fired a disgruntled engineer after he wrote a manifesto complaining about diversity and the biological basis for women’s poor performance in the tech field also prompts this personal story.

The year was 2000. I was doing my best to manage environmental issues for a major electric utility company. The company had an active Public Affairs department and one of the things they did was compile and e-mail news items to top executives and corporate staff like me who represented the company externally.

With the presidential election only a few days away, our Corporate Communications people wanted us to see the statements made by Michigan governor John Engler. As George W. Bush’s state campaign manager, he criticized the Clinton-Gore energy record. In his statement, he attacked the Democrats for “failing to develop a coherent energy policy.”

I don’t recall if October 25, 2000 was a particularly bad day for me but children, do not do what I did. I drew upon my experience in the business and hit ‘Reply to All’ with the following:

“While it is convenient for Republicans to charge the current administration with not having any energy policy, that is one characteristic that has united ALL the administrations back to the oil crisis in the mid-70’s. Despite the upheavals and implications of the OPEC embargo, Three Mile Island, the natural gas crisis that lead to the Fuel Use Act and other upsets, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush did no more to encourage, let alone establish a coherent energy policy than did Carter or Clinton. I would suggest if candidate Bush wants to show he is more attuned to the need for a national energy policy, he should talk about more than drilling for oil in Alaska”.

Within hours, I received an e-mail from the corporate center advising me that this kind of communication was not well-received in certain quarters. See the ‘top executives’ part earlier. This was a ‘CLM’ (career limiting move) on my part.

So, for you budding corporate drones out there and anyone else who feels obliged to make a point. Think twice about who will see it.